Shake, Shimmy, & Dance: 5/26

The Plan

BookMonsters Love Colors by Mike Austin
Another favorite of my crowd. This crowd really got into mixing up the colors and the kiddos were pros at telling me what colors we were making! This title is a great way to incorporate STEM ideas (color mixing) into your preschool and toddler events/storytimes. Also, it goes great with our prop, too.

How It Went

Since we’ve had a few weeks of Shake, Shimmy to re-acclimate to moving together, I started today’s class off with a free dance! I absolutely adore the energy of the Fresh Beat Band and I really appreciate that they have diversity in their group (unlike many of the other TV show adult singing groups), so “Music (Keeps Me Movin’)” was an awesome choice. Then, a Shake, Shimmy song that hasn’t been used in quite some time: Ralph Covert’s “Wiggle Your Lah-de-Dah”. This song really works best for preschool, so I probably should have held off until the summer when my crowd ages up.

“Dance With Me” is one of my favorite ‘trick’ songs. I always introduce the song by having my friends find the best grown-up to dance with. I remind caregivers that the kids *like* dancing with me, but they *love* it when their familiar grown-ups join the group. And then it was time for a new Shake, Shimmy song called “Beep Beep Beep” by Dan Vapid. I told the kids today was a special day that they got to drive around the room. And believe me, they took off!

For our props today, I used two brand-new Shake, Shimmy songs. I started with “Colors” by Play Date to encourage the kids to look at the different colored scarves around the room. If this hadn’t been at the tail end of a germy couple of weeks at the library, I would have had them practice exchanging scarves with a friend to share their colors. For “Fireworks”, we tossed our scarves up in the air to simulate fireworks. (And yes, my arm mysteriously hurt the next day from this activity, ha!)

(For an example of the Powerpoint and handouts that I made for each Shake, Shimmy please visit the original post.)